How To Become A Career Development Director: What It Is and Career Path

What is a career development director and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a career development director. For example, did you know that they make an average of $34.6 an hour? That's $71,969 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 7% and produce 15,500 job opportunities across the U.S.

ScoreCareer Development DirectorUS Average

Salary

5.6

Avg. Salary $71,969

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

8.1

Growth rate 7%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.70%

Asian 4.40%

Black or African American 10.94%

Hispanic or Latino 14.50%

Unknown 4.01%

White 65.44%

Gender

female 65.29%

male 34.71%

Age - 47

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 47

Stress level

8.1

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.8

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a career development director

Explore career development director education requirements

Most common career development director degrees

Bachelor's

62.0 %

Master's

24.8 %

Associate

7.9 %

Start to develop specific career development director skills

Skills	Percentages
Alumni	24.12%
Career Services	14.02%
Professional Development	12.42%
Colleges	8.76%
External Stakeholders	7.21%

Complete relevant career development director training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New career development directors learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a career development director based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real career development director resumes.

Research career development director duties and responsibilities

Hire, manage and train a team of six sourcing professionals as well as a team of 3 QA managers.
Resolve financial issues relate to charitable contributions, provide program budgets, process payroll, and oversight management of operating accounts.
Partner with business leadership to develop cutting edge technology to distribute and service insurance products direct to consumers.

Get career development director experience

Generally, it takes 4-6 years to become a career development director. The most common roles before becoming a career development director include internship, career services director team lead and recruiter.

Prepare your career development director resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your career development director resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a career development director resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable career development director resume templates

Build a professional career development director resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your career development director resume.

Apply for career development director jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a career development director job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do career development directors rate their job?

-/5

5 stars

4 stars

3 stars

2 stars

1 star

Career development director reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Jul 2020

Pros

Helping students develop strategies for their futures and supporting career outcomes is very rewarding. Launching students into careers is very satisfying if you are altruistic and have a helper mentality.

Cons

As a Director at a state institution, I am involved in a lot of administrative duties: budgeting, hiring, training and developing, strategic planning, evaluating programming. These duties are demanding and are necessary for successful outcomes, but they are not as fun as supporting and helping students.

A zippia user wrote a review on Nov 2019